Sic Transit Privacy…Privacy Fades

Keep the noise on the line low; you don’t want to blow it. Shaking head to toe while your left hand hovers over the upload button, quickens the heartbeat, beats you straight to the fall. You don’t recover from an upload like this, a victim, still staring at the screen completely motionless. A hand moves in the dark to the mouse, hear a boy bracing tight against the Lazyboy, a barley whisper, “This is so messed up”.

Upon arrival the guests had all stared. A newborn baby, headed straight to the camera phone. No longer a life of privacy but a life in a stitch, unprepared for a life full of privacy policies and publicly failing relationships.

He keeps his hands low, he doesn’t want to blow it. His eyes give the picture of her the up and down. His stomach turns and he thinks of throwing up, but the Facebook photo album beckons forward and she’ll start growing up.

The fever, the focus, and the reasons that he had to believe he wasn’t too hard to sell. Give up their privacy young, save them. The Like button, the Share This, it used to be the reason he lived but now it’s chocking him up.

He clicks the upload button, it doesn’t seem quite fair. Everything he learned from his own experiences, he doesn’t feel like his children will be so prepared. “This is the first and last time,” he says. The screen fakes a smile and a shows him he already has 25 likes. He keeps his hands down at his sides. He’s holding back from posting exactly what it really feels like.

He is the lamb, it is the slaughter. It’s moving way to fast all he wanted was to share her. Nothing that he tells himself is really having an effect. He whispers that he loves her and it’s probably only looking for advertising revenue.

So much more than he wanted to give. A life online – full of public relationships.
He keeps his hands down at his sides, waits for it to end and for the aching in his guts to subside.